Terraforming Mars

wrote:

Do you think it is a good idea to terraform Mars or the moon or any
other planet?


I believe the ethic expressed in Star Trek II is an appropriate one.
We should be very reluctant to intentionally alter a world where native
life is known to exist...

...but if it's clearly a dead world, I don't care if you turn it into
Disney World. Go for it.


One exception: It may even be possible to terraform Earth's Moon, but
I believe that in the long run, it'll be too useful to us as it is. A
stable, nearby, low-gravity platform with vacuul all the way to the
surface, is good for some things, that a transplanted ecosystem would
tend to take away.


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"Paul F. Dietz" wrote:

Earl Colby Pottinger wrote:

Do you think it is a good idea to terraform Mars or the moon or any
other planet?


???? Why do you even have to ask? You make it sound like it may be a bad
thing.

Of *course* it's a bad thing. It's blatantly economically nonsensical.

Paul


With today's technology? Or that of some later time?

I think he's asking about the ethics, not the current practicality.


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Joann Evans wrote:

With today's technology? Or that of some later time?

I think he's asking about the ethics, not the current practicality.

It's very likely to take a long, long time to do.

This means interest costs will kill you, unless society has
become so static that interest rates are near zero. But in that
case, I doubt they'd be terraforming Mars.

Paul

Mike Combs wrote:

wrote in message
oups.com...
Do you think it is a good idea to terraform Mars or the moon or any
other planet?

Personally, I think one can get much better returns on one's investment on
much shorter timescales with the orbital habitat concepts proposed by Gerard
O'Neill.


Depends. Some people *want* to live down in a gravity well, just not
necessairily *this* one.

And yes, I know it's 'cheaper' to not have to go down into, or up out
of one to begin with, but I suspect that in 100 years (or somewhat less)
those additional tens of thousands of feet-per-second won't matter. Nor
will we be taking minimum-energy paths across the solar system (except
perhaps some bulk cargo) all the time.

If using the least energy were all that mattered, we'd still have
nothing but sailing ships. Eventually, gravity well concerns (except
close to the Sun and gas giants, perhaps) will be be similarly
irrelevant. Terraforming likely will not be practical before such time
(and will *take* signifigant time), anyway.



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Nog wrote:

wrote in message
oups.com...
Do you think it is a good idea to terraform Mars or the moon or any
other planet?

It's always a good idea to make a planet habitable. Trouble is if unkind
things evolve and develop, radical earthlings will be screaming 'tampering
or conspiracy' or some other stupid reaction. They might start a jihad or
liberation front and cause all kinds of ignoant damage.


And that will be different from not terraforming...how?

If we refrain from doing something useful because extremists of one
kind or another *might* do something destructive with it (what if a
provably precognitive person had said; "Don't develop big commercial
airacraft, someone will hijack some and crash them into buildings."),
then nothing will ever get done...


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Joann Evans wrote:


With today's technology? Or that of some later time?

I think he's asking about the ethics, not the current
practicality.

That was the way I took the question, perhaps with a bit of
economic/social long-term benefit thrown in. Terraforming is
way, way beyond what we can do today.

If you had a Magic Terraforming Wand(*) that would do the deed
instantaneously and at zero immediate cost, would you wave it?

(*) Or, more or less equivalently, a can of NanoReplicant-
OmnipotentAssemblers that you could drop on the planet of
interest.

"Joann Evans" wrote in message
...
Mike Combs wrote:

wrote in message
oups.com...
Do you think it is a good idea to terraform Mars or the moon or any
other planet?

Personally, I think one can get much better returns on one's investment
on
much shorter timescales with the orbital habitat concepts proposed by
Gerard
O'Neill.


Depends. Some people *want* to live down in a gravity well, just not
necessairily *this* one.

Why?

I can see reasons to prefer to live in "gravity" (and this can be adequately
simulated by rotation). But what would motivate anyone to say, "Yeah, the
bottom of a steep gravity well. That's the place for me!"?

And yes, I know it's 'cheaper' to not have to go down into, or up out
of one to begin with, but I suspect that in 100 years (or somewhat less)
those additional tens of thousands of feet-per-second won't matter. Nor
will we be taking minimum-energy paths across the solar system (except
perhaps some bulk cargo) all the time.

As technology advances, the _magnitude_ of the economic difference in the
two situations may decline. But the difference will never go away or
reverse itself. Not being at the bottom of a gravity well will always
present at least some advantage.

Besides, the gravity well issue (while significant) was not primarily what I
was thinking about when I made the remark. I was thinking more about things
like that terrraforming Mars may take a millenia, or at the very least
several centuries, while construction of the first O'Neill habitat would
probably not take longer than 30 years, meaning a person starting the
project can live to take advantage of the end results. I'm thinking about
the fact that in terms of "gravity" and sunlight levels, the interior of an
orbital habitat can be made more Earthlike than even a thoroughly
terraformed Mars.


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Regards,
Mike Combs
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Member of the National Non-sequitur Society. We may not make
much sense, but we do like pizza.

Mike Combs wrote:

But what would motivate anyone to say, "Yeah, the
bottom of a steep gravity well. That's the place for me!"?

You live at the bottom of a steep gravity well. Are you suprised
that others might have similar tastes?

Jim Davis

Rand Simberg ) wrote:
: On 29 May 2005 10:25:53 -0700, in a place far, far away, "Space Cadet"
: made the phosphor on my monitor glow in such a way
: as to indicate that:

: Whats the rush?

: Who's in a rush?

Some bumb, or was he merely stumbling?

Rand Simberg wrote:

"Tastes"? It's not like any of us has a choice right now.

????

Rand, you spend a great deal of your online time asserting that we
do indeed have a choice. Indeed, when someone like Ordover claims
otherwise you denounce him for being a troll.

You can't have it both ways.

Jim Davis